Strategic plans are the lifeblood of any growing company. They provide direction, align teams, and define what success looks like. Yet, too often, these brilliant plans end up as static documents—spreadsheets or slide decks that are created with enthusiasm, filed away, and rarely consulted. They quickly become outdated, making it impossible to track progress in real-time.
What if you could transform your strategy from a static document into a living, breathing dashboard that everyone in the company could see? What if your Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) updated automatically as work gets done?
This is where the power of visualization meets the precision of code. By combining the "Strategy as Code" approach of Plans.do with the powerful business intelligence of Tableau, you can create dynamic, real-time dashboards that turn your strategic goals into actionable insights.
Before we dive into the "how," let's talk about the "why." Moving your plan from a document to a dashboard offers transformative benefits:
The magic begins with treating your business plan like software. At Plans.do, we champion the concept of Business Planning as Code. Instead of using a clunky UI, you define your plans programmatically using our powerful API.
Here’s how you might define a quarterly expansion plan using the Plans.do SDK:
import { plans } from '@do/sdk';
const newPlan = await plans.create({
name: "Q4 2025 Expansion Plan",
description: "Expand into the European market and increase user base by 20%.",
type: "OKR",
goals: [
{
objective: "Achieve 50,000 new users in EU",
keyResults: [
{ metric: "New User Signups", startValue: 0, targetValue: 50000 },
{ metric: "Website Traffic (EU)", startValue: 0, targetValue: 200000 }
]
},
{
objective: "Establish Local Partnerships",
keyResults: [
{ metric: "Signed Partner Agreements", startValue: 0, targetValue: 5 }
]
}
]
});
console.log(newPlan.id);
// pln_1a2b3c4d5e6f7g8h
By defining your strategy in a structured format like this, you create a clean, predictable, and machine-readable source of truth. This structured data is perfectly suited for consumption by business intelligence tools like Tableau.
Ready to build your dashboard? Here’s how you can feed your strategic data from the Plans.do API directly into Tableau.
First, you need to retrieve your plan data. The Plans.do API provides simple REST endpoints for this. You would make a GET request to an endpoint like:
https://api.plans.do/v1/plans/{plan_id}/progress
This endpoint would return a clean JSON object containing your objectives and the current status of each key result. Your systems would programmatically update the currentValue as progress is made.
A sample JSON response might look like this:
{
"planName": "Q4 2025 Expansion Plan",
"goals": [
{
"objective": "Achieve 50,000 new users in EU",
"keyResults": [
{
"metric": "New User Signups",
"startValue": 0,
"targetValue": 50000,
"currentValue": 12500
},
{
"metric": "Website Traffic (EU)",
"startValue": 0,
"targetValue": 200000,
"currentValue": 64000
}
]
},
{
"objective": "Establish Local Partnerships",
"keyResults": [
{
"metric": "Signed Partner Agreements",
"startValue": 0,
"targetValue": 5,
"currentValue": 2
}
]
}
]
}
You have a couple of great options for getting this data into Tableau:
For Quick Analysis: Tableau Web Data Connector (WDC)
The WDC is designed to connect Tableau to data accessible over HTTP that doesn't have a native connector. You can build a simple WDC that authenticates with the Plans.do API, fetches the data, and parses the JSON into a tabular format Tableau can digest (e.g., with columns for Objective, Metric, Target Value, Current Value).
For Robust Scalability: The ETL/Data Warehouse Approach
For a more enterprise-grade solution, use a simple script (e.g., Python with requests) to periodically pull data from the Plans.do API and load it into your data warehouse (like Snowflake, Google BigQuery, or Amazon Redshift). Tableau has native, high-performance connectors for all major data warehouses. This approach is highly scalable and allows you to join your planning data with other business data for even richer insights.
Once your data is connected, it’s time for the fun part! Drag and drop to build your visualizations:
The true power of an API-first approach is automation. Plans.do is not just a place to store your plan; it's an agentic workflow platform. Using our webhooks, you can create a fully synchronized ecosystem:
By combining Plans.do's "Strategy as Code" methodology with Tableau's visualization prowess, you can finally close the loop between planning, execution, and reporting. You move from a world of static documents to one of dynamic, actionable insights that empower your entire organization.
Ready to transform your strategic planning? Explore the Plans.do API documentation and start building your first automated plan today.